Decentralized Framework for Collection and Secure Storage of Google Street View Data: Case Study
Sanjaya Mallikarachchi, Bonnie S. Ho, Iyad A. Kanj, Oshani Seneviratne, Isuru S. Godage · 2023
Image data plays a pivotal role in the current data-driven era, particularly in applications such as computer vision, object recognition, and facial identification. Google Maps®stands out as a widely used platform that heavily relies on street view images. To fulfill the pressing need for an effective and distributed mechanism for image data collection, we present a framework that utilizes smart contract technology and open-source robots to gather street-view image sequences. The proposed framework also includes a protocol for maintaining these sequences using a private blockchain capable of retaining different versions of street views while ensuring the integrity of collected data. With this framework, Google Maps®data can be securely collected, stored, and published on a private blockchain. By conducting tests with actual robots, we demonstrate the feasibility of the framework and its capability to seamlessly upload privately maintained blockchain image sequences to Google Maps®using the Google Street View®Publish API.